Chris Selley: Alberta ready to concede defeat to gasoline thieves

Certain Albertans want the province to pass a law requiring motorists to pay for gasoline, either at the pump or to a human being manning a cash register, before they fill up their tanks. As a non-car-owning Torontonian who generally prefers to avoid human contact at gas stations, I am somewhat surprised to find that I care about this. But I do. It’s actually rather profoundly depressing.

The problem isn’t the idea, or the inconvenience it portends — which, let’s face it, is minor. The problem is who supports the idea: at least some gas stations, the Edmonton Journal’s editorial board and, most perplexingly, the Association of Alberta Police Chiefs, which is the driving force behind the idea.

The problem they want to solve is real. Gas stations are losing money from pumping-and-dashing. And employees can be, and have been, seriously hurt — even killed — trying to intercept gasoline thieves. Defending one’s livelihood is always honourable, but modern sensibilities understandably recoil at the idea of someone winding up in hospital because they chased after $50. I suppose we could arm gas jockeys, but those same sensibilities might pose a problem.

The easiest solution is precisely the one the police chiefs propose: Affected gas stations should make customers pay at the pump, or in advance. But law-abiding people don’t like being treated like de facto criminals. So no station wants to be the first to lay down the law to their customers or to head office, both of which might well push back. (“We’re not in favour of it because our customers aren’t,” a Shell Canada spokesman told the Calgary Herald.) One Edmonton station manager told the Journal, basically, that it would just be easier if the government stepped in and solved the problem, so nobody had to lose any business.

Nuts to that. Enacting legislation to solve a problem that individuals or businesses can solve themselves with almost literally no effort — i.e., by instituting the very policy they want the government to enshrine in law — infantilizes citizens, wastes politicians’ time and brings the very idea of government into (more) disrepute. It’s as if they made it illegal not to lock your door when you’re out walking the dog. If the honour system isn’t working, it’s incumbent upon businesses to take the dead simple step of abandoning it. That’s all there is to it.

But the police chiefs’ motivations are the most dispiriting: Basically, they consider investigating gasoline theft a waste of time. Well, they wouldn’t put it that bluntly, of course. They’re more subtle about it, and they add a little scare factor too.

“Sometimes the thefts are as little as $15,” Calgary Police Association president John Dooks told the Herald. “Not that they aren’t important, we just don’t have time to investigate minor, preventable crimes when there are major ones, like attacks on persons, that we can be dealing with.”

This just reeks of defeatism. If someone steals $15 or $50 or $70 from you, it’s not really important. You probably should have been more careful. And don’t you know society’s going to hell in a handbasket, anyway? At the very moment you lost your few dollars, someone was probably battering a war veteran about the eyes and mouth with his own cane. Feel good about calling us now?

It would be far less offensive if the cops just said to the gas stations themselves, look, you’re basically leaving your houses unlocked. We’ll write up a report every time that policy bites you in the rear end, but don’t expect us to pull out all the stops.

By publicly supporting a legislative approach predicated on a supposed lack of resources, they’re weakening their most important role in society as a sort of friendly, professional, moral bulwark against general delinquency and decay. Of course everyone knows certain crimes won’t receive the police’s full, enthusiastic attention. But to admit it? To suggest they aren’t giving self-described “important” crimes the attention they deserve? And to suggest the government simply pass a law to save them the hassle?

It’s a scene you’d expect from somewhere on an inexorable wane — a town whose sawmill just closed down and must choose between a diminished existence or none at all. Alberta’s seen better times, but it’s still a rich, safe, proud, reasonably law-abiding place most of the world would hack off an arm to live in. It’s a place where you should be able to pay for gas after you pump it, and if it isn’t anymore, the police should be explaining how they can help turn it back into that place.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.